Mobile devices, e.g., cell phones, today have increasingly sophisticated and enhanced cameras that support users capturing quality photographic images and video, collectively referred to herein as images. Moreover, mobile devices today further have increasingly abundant, high-performance computation power, i.e., are computer devices in their own right with significant computational power that can be channeled into a myriad of applications.
Photosynth is an example of a technology that can benefit from the technological advances in mobile devices. Photosynth enables users to create a three-dimensional, 3-D, browsing experience, i.e., a photosynth, with their photographs. To create a photosynth a user begins by capturing a set of images, or photographs, that have to overlap, cover the scene that is to be generated in 3-D, and contain sufficient textural detail to allow a rich photosynth to be generated. Because of the quality of the cameras in mobile devices today users can utilize their mobile devices to capture images for a photosynth.
Once captured, the images for a photosynth are downloaded to a computer, or computer device, to be processed. The processing, or synthing, of the images can take many hours, depending on the quality and resolution of the images, the detail of the subject matter of the photosynth and the power of the computing device processor. After synthing, the images and associated metadata are uploaded to a photosynth server. At this time a user can finally browse and experience their images in 3-D, or alternatively, discover that they failed to capture a sufficient number of and/or acceptable quality images of the subject matter to render a 3-D, or quality 3-D, image thereof.
Because a user cannot predict the quality of a resultant photosynth frustration can occur in both the generation of a photosynth and the discovery that the generation failed to accomplish the intended goal. For example, a user, to attempt to ensure that they capture all the necessary images for proper coverage and overlap of the subject matter, can take many more redundant pictures of the same image than ultimately is necessary. This redundant capture exercise can greatly increase the time it takes a user to capture photos. Excessive redundant photo capture can also utilize significant storage space that can impede the entire process and/or cause its own problems, e.g., too many images of the same shot can result in no storage available for images of other necessary shots of the subject matter. Finally, excessive redundant photo capture can generate user boredom which detracts from the exercise and the user's ultimate pleasure and desire to create image-based projects, such as photosynths, resulting in none but the most avid enthusiasts doing so.
Moreover, because a user cannot predict the quality of a resultant image-based project, such as a photosynth, and the actual project generation, e.g., synthesizing, also referred to herein as synthing, can be time consuming, user frustration can result when the project generation thereafter fails, e.g., the resultant 3-D image is of a poor quality or could not be generated at all because of missing and/or poor quality images. In this case the user may have to try to return to the scene of the subject matter and attempt to capture missing images, imposing additional user time and effort. And, in some instances, the user may not have the ability to capture desired additional images, e.g., the subject matter scene is no longer logistically accessible to the user, eventuating wasted user effort and additional user dissatisfaction.
Thus, it is desirable to utilize the computational and communicative power of a user's mobile device to assist a user to capture desired, quality images of a subject matter for a photosynth or other image-based projects.